V�lklingen Ironworks

It all began in 1873 when the smelting engineer Julis Buch founded a steel mill near V�lklingen. A state-of-the-art industrial complex in its time, these vast ironworks set milestones in technological history and were Germany's largest producer of iron for over a century. V�lklingen Ironworks is now a fascinating interactive theme park with industrial buildings of gargantuan proportions. Its six huge blast furnaces, 6,000m� blasting hall with colossal machines and the world's only sloping lift are regarded as some of the finest feats of engineering from the beginning of the 20th century. The 30-metre-tall charging platform, where the coke and the ore were poured into the blast furnaces, is now a gigantic viewing platform, surpassed in height only by the hot-blast stoves that reach up 45 metres. V�lklingen Ironworks was included on the World Heritage list as the world's only preserved iron smelting plant from the heyday of the iron and steel industry.